"A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming. Lukewarm or shallow Christians will not come through with their faith intact. Christians today must dig deep into the Bible and church tradition and teach themselves how and why today's post-Christian world, with its self-centeredness, its quest for happiness and rejection of sacred order and transcendent values, is a rival religion to authentic Christianity." - Rod Dreher, "Live Not By Lies"
It seems to me that people, in general, are bad at seeing persecution coming. If they could see it coming, the instances of it would be more rare because people, seeing what is coming, would avoid it. It is often said, too, that "history does not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes." The next totalitarian regime in the World isn't going to look like Nazi Germany (and yet people are always talking about "the next Hitler"). It will be no less destructive and oppressive, but the people who get sucked into its' orbit will think everything is OK (maybe even great), until it isn't.
The reason I feel such an urgency to share my faith these days, particularly with fellow Christians, is because, for some unknown-to-me reason, I feel like I can see what's coming. The moment we live in now feels historic, the winds of change are starting to blow harder. Maybe it is something peculiar to the time in which I was born - that I have been someone who has lived through the technological revolution that has happened over the past 30 years, I don't know.
What I have come to understand is that without a firm foundation, Faith is tenuous when hard times come. Whether is it a storm in our own lives (long-term illness, death of a loved one, financial hardship, etc) or a storm in society (persecution, government oppression, etc), these times of testing reveal what we actually believe is true. In some ways, I believe this is God's design - He is the one who laid the curse on humanity after the Fall in the Garden - and in the same way a father disciplines a wayward child, that Curse was meant to work as a discipline of humanity. The difficulty, pain, suffering, and hardship of life is meant to cause us to turn toward God. It doesn't work like this for everyone though. For the person whose faith is only surface level, when hard times come, they don't have anything firmly planted and the shallow roots of that faith are easily ripped out of the ground.
So why not prepare now? When we see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon, we grab a raincoat and the umbrella. We close the windows of our homes and make sure everything in the yard is secured. This is that opportunity. Root your faith firmly now so that when the winds really start to blow and the circumstances get more difficult, you know what it is that you're holding on to. You won't easily lose sight of the promises of God and the Hope we have in Jesus' return.
"Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." (Matthew 7:24-27, NIV)
**I recommend that book I quoted from at the outset. I found it to be somewhat biased (I believe that there are equal dangers from the extremes of both the Left AND the Right, politically speaking, in this country) but nevertheless helpful. It certainly is helpful in making the case for 'preparedness' when it comes to Faith. It is also instructive in that it gives many insights from those who lived through totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. I very much appreciated their insight in how to resist at an individual or familial level.
